Not sure if this is the right sub, but a quick question about fighter design
Posted by Worried_Place_917@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 21 comments
I know dogfighting is basically nonexistent anymore, but has any modern fighter had a rear-facing gun? Like I feel like that could solve pursuit problems really well.
What's the last thing that had a tailgun and why did they vanish? Though dogfighting maneuvers are mostly video game and movie tropes now.
lioncryable@reddit
One giant issue with this is the fighter might be going really fast (let's say 1500-2000 km/h or 416-555 m/s) An average jet gun fires ammunition at around 1000 m/s but since it would be pointing backwards the bullets are still travelling forward at around 500 m/s so it would effectively slow the bullets in half before they even leave the barrel.
This is kinda hard to imagine but there is a great video of a guy getting launched backwards via catapult off a truck at 80 mph/h while the truck is driving forward at 80 mph/h. He just lands normally on his feet as if he wasn't moving at all. Pretty crazy
Worried_Place_917@reddit (OP)
I have seen that episode of mythbusters, it was real cool to see play out. For ground targets it would basically just drop them straight down, but closing speed with another fighter on the tail it would still be at the same relative speed to the enemy as a normal bullet.
First_Tea8991@reddit
Some guy has probably asked this genuinely and it has a bunch of down votes
TaskForceCausality@reddit
They always were hoss. Dogfights happen, but they’re so uncommon in any given modern campaign it is logistically foolish to design an aircraft for them.
Examples- USAF ace Frederick “Boots” Blesse only shot down four MiGs in Korea at the end of his 100 mission tour. He begged his CO for an extension so he could get another one and rotate home as an ace. He discovered the whole “MiG Alley” thing was basically propaganda. The Communist side had higher flying MiG-15s and regularly just bypassed the escort fighters, so the majority of allied pilots in that war didn’t get even 1 kill.
In case you’re thinking this is an artifact of the 50s, note that in Desert Storm the USAF 58th TFS took down 14 Iraqi aircraft with their Eagles. All well and good, but the squadron flew 1,600 sorties during the war. There’s lotteries with better odds than that. Each sortie was an air to air mission, yet the closest most USAF Eagle pilots got to a kill was a debrief from the lucky guy in the right place at the right time.
It’s almost been a decade since the last time a U.S. pilot shot down a manned fighter aircraft. Now consider in that time the millions of other sorties flown, most of them air to ground in nature.
This statistical reality is why jet fighter aircraft designed for purely air to air roles don’t exist, and the few historically that were built feature short service lives -or were modified to fly air to ground missions. For all the “no points for second place” machoness, a combat airplanes relevance to a war is measured by its bomb payload and range - not how fast it can turn or how many one liners it can haul.
Alexthelightnerd@reddit
That's not an accurate statement. The F-15C and F-22 exist as almost exclusively air to air fighters.
Historically the F-8 was predominantly an air to air fighter, and the F-14 remained an exclusively air to air fighter until well after the end of the Cold War.
On the other side of the Cold War the MiG-25 was exclusively an air to air fighter, and while the MiG-21, MiG-29 and Su-27 had limited air to ground capability, it was not considered their primary role. The MiG-23, much like the F-14, was exclusively an air to air fighter for the first part of its life, seeing a transition to the air to ground role only late in its life.
TaskForceCausality@reddit
The F-15C was built with air to ground capability- foreign users employ it all the time. The F-22 is a great example of my point. In the early 2000s the USAF brass rushed air to ground capability into the F-22 and attempted to rename it the “F/A-22”, because a $200+ million air to air only aircraft was totally irrelevant in a war against an enemy with no air force . That’s a bad look when the Army’s bolting scrap armor to their vehicles for lack of budget money. The fact the most expensive air to air platform ever built couldn’t substantially contribute to an active land war is a big reason why the 300+ order was cut to 187.
For all the macho chest beating about “last of the gunfighters”, most of its sorties were some kind of air to ground mission, like flak suppression. Further ,the 20mm cannons spent most of their time jamming. As for the F-14, the Tomcat’s greatest contribution to warfighting happened after Captain Dale Snodgrass integrated precision air to ground munitions into the jet. For all its Cold War prowess , the Tomcat made its mark in Iraq and Afghanistan moving mud and performing FAC duties.
Captain Snodgrass himself put it plainly; without his teams work getting PGMs and the LANTIRN on the Tomcat they’d have been retired in the late 90s.
The MiG-25RB was a Reconaissance/bomber variant, and was used extensively by Iraq to bomb Iranian cities at high Mach. They took bombing tables intended for nuclear delivery and used them for conventional ordnance, so at supersonic speed the Foxbats could attack well away from Iranian defenses.
This would be news to the Cubans, who extensively used the MiG-21 and MiG-23 as an air to ground platform in Angola. The Syrians and Ukrainians should also be notified that their Fulcrums have limited air to ground capability!
Alexthelightnerd@reddit
The F-15C hasn't used its air to ground capability at all in USAF service, which pretty directly contravenes your point. The F-22 was briefly given air to ground duties twice, once for political budgetary reasons before the aircraft was even operational and once to fill a deep tactical strike capability gap after the F-117 was retired while the F-35 was delayed. Neither really proves your point as the F-22 continues to serve as an air to air only platform, as does the F-15C.
Yes, the F-14 would have been retired earlier if it had not been modified for the air to ground mission, but that doesn't change the fact that it served for decades as a dedicated air to air fighter.
Of course small air forces without a deep inventory of dedicated specialist aircraft use single types for a wide range of missions. The Soviet air force did not utilize the MiG-21 or MiG-29 extensively in a ground attack role, and the MiG-23 did not see extensive ground attack missions until Afghanistan, decades after it entered service.
The MiG-25RB is essentially a separate aircraft not a modification of the MiG-25. The MiG-25R even started production first, though both variants were designed side by side. This is only example of how a high speed high altitude airframe was useful for multiple purposes, not the Soviet air force recognizing that a dedicated interceptor would be useless.
Look, I don't entirely disagree with your base point. Air to ground capable aircraft are clearly more valuable to military operatons than dedicated fighters and the broad history of tactical aviation shows this pretty clearly. But claiming that dedicated jet fighters simply didn't exist or had short service lives is just wrong. You'd be more on point if you claimed that dedicated fighters fell out of popularity after the end of the Cold War; there was very clearly a shift towards multi-role at that point. But a Cold War dedicated air to air fighter being flexed into an air to ground role after the end of the Cold War does not prove that it was never valuable as a fighter, it only proves that the air war paradigm had radically shifted.
sniper4273@reddit
Quite simply, modern fighters don’t have to be behind you to kill you.
SirLoremIpsum@reddit
Western world probably the B-52.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ysf743/a_better_explanation_of_the_b52s_tail_guns/
If you want fighter specifically then we're probably talking WWII / Korea vintage ala SBD Dauntless dive bomber.
The why is they just weren't that effective to start with. It's hard to hit a moving target when you're also maneuvering. A b-17 has huge arcs of firing to dispense .50 but a smaller aircraft like the Dauntless doesn't. It doesn't fit, it's hard to hit anything to begin with, it weighs a LOT.
Then missiles come out and it's doubly obsolete. Going supersonic with the rear dude sitting backwards? Can't imagine trying to hit anything while maneuvering at the speed of a modern F-22
WarthogOsl@reddit
Supersonic bombers did have tail guns for a time, for example the B-58 Hustler. The Soviet Tu-22 and Tu-22M both had them as well. In these cases, the guns were remotely controlled by an operator at the front, and/or automatically aimed with radar.
patriotstate@reddit
You’re adding another Cannon to the fighter, a third seat for the rear gunner.
That would make the aircraft much heavier, so it has a shorter time in the air, and it’s probably adding a couple of tons to the aircraft, making it slower.
F-14s could fire from 20 miles away. But most current dog fights are not Gun to Gun, they are heat or radar guided missiles – which you’re always fired when the enemy is in sight and is a great percentage of actually hitting him if you fire.
FZ_Milkshake@reddit
Pursuit isn't really a thing, if the enemy fighter is close enough to be hit by guns, they'll have fired missiles already and if the goal is to destroy the missiles, a small gun turret at the back of a fighter jet is not the right tool. Look at sea or ground based CWIS systems, the Phalanx CWIS weighs a casual 6.000kg, you are not going to strap something like that on the back of an F-16.
ShIVWilton@reddit
If you’re talking 4th gen and above fighters going against an equivalent fighter then your statement about pursuit not really being a thing is valid. But when you look at countries like NK that are still rocking large numbers of mig 17’s and 21’s they don’t have many missile options and they would most likely be attempting to ambush in large numbers for close range missile or guns kills against a more modern enemy.
Dogfighting and guns engagements are still heavily trained to in the US, but against a peer or near-peer threat it would be analogous to a Russian or Ukrainian infantryman going for a knife kill. Probably better to wait for a more advantageous opportunity.
Worried_Place_917@reddit (OP)
Yeah that does make practical sense. Actual engagements are miles to tens or hundreds of miles out. I've just seen so much media and game content on old school fighters caught in dogfights "switching to guns" and keeping out of box with turns and maneuvers that I think still get taught, but just wondered.
FZ_Milkshake@reddit
Hundreds of miles would be a very far shot, but like 2-7 miles for an IR missile and 10-50 for a radar guided missile are usual. Even in the most close in situations the enemy fighter is just a dot and missiles move really really fast compared to fighter jets and can have more or less the same velocity like a projectile out of a CWIS gun.
Getting shot by a missile is nothing like being chased by a torpedo, it's much closer to being shot at by a gun (and the projectile can adjust it's course).
Worried_Place_917@reddit (OP)
As I was typing "hundreds" thought "that's probably too many, And I have no baseline"
ShIVWilton@reddit
A successful gun shot requires you to be in range, in plane, and pulling lead. Difficult in the best of times off the nose. Trying to make that happen off your tail would be almost impossible, but in trying you would definitely make it easier for the attacker to get a guns shot.
As a defender your job is to get out of plane and create difficult angles for the pursuing fighter to force an overshoot or gain maneuvering room to separate or neutralize the fight.
KehreAzerith@reddit
Rear firing air to air missiles were considered, but guns, nope
pattern_altitude@reddit
That was a thing on bombers, not so much fighters. Dogfights are never really chases like the movies show.
Worried_Place_917@reddit (OP)
I figured that was the answer.
Dr---Beeper@reddit
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=has+any+modern+fighter+had+a+rear-facing+gun%3F&ia=web